Arhi FF: Labyrinth - Thread 2 Link posted - Page 3

Even as I was getting into the elevator, Vishwa called. "Kushi, are you here?" he spoke in a rush, his manners strangled by his overpowering anxiety.

"In the lobby. Will be there in a minute." I reassured him, while considering if I had taken Dhri seriously and had stopped by the lobby coffee shop, only in revolt to delay delivering the file they were expecting by a few additional minutes.

"No, that's fine," he dismissed. "But, can you pick up a fresh pot of coffee from the kitchen? The clients are fussing over the chai we ordered in."

"Really?" I wondered what she-devil had possessed everyone to send me chasing behind unfitting chores this morning. "I thought you paid the assistants to get you coffee and more. I have a real job you know."

"Shyama," he said with intent, invoking my middle name which was seldom used, though it was the one I preferred. "Just get the coffee. I promise I will explain everything later." With that brief request that was atypical of him, he ended the call.

Rolling my eyes, I stepped out of the elevator confines to enter our office premises. "Kampilya" it read on the wall to my right, the gold metallic projection carved in devanagiri font style spanned the entire length of the lobby wall. Dim bluish green lights and black marble and a surreal center piece of a life-size tree with crafty adornments of delicately glowing blue water lilies placed all over its branches and the floor in random, took me into another dimension of time. The design was mine, spun-out one lazy afternoon after papa had forced me to redecorate the office entry space.

"Anything would do, Kushi, You would work with your quirky aunts and refuse to design your papa's firm? I don't approve at all." He'd chided before walking away. I had been sitting by the kitchen island, my eyes fixed in the dark, at the bluish flame of our gas stove during the early dawn hours. I had watched it flicker and burn and diffuse like a burning blue flower around its black center. Something about that striking blue infused into my senses and remained with me for the rest of the day. When I had aimlessly drawn outlines of a lotus, I had picked up a blue crayon happenstance. Over that black chart, blue appeared esoteric and thrummed with a sensual restlessness. It was definitively magical than a white lotus in that same backdrop which was a gnarl of contrasts; or over a pink lotus, which looked quotidian.

If red was the color of desire, white of purity, pink of childish baubles then the mystical blue of the cosmos - the color that the endless skies and the deep oceans chose to conceal their unintelligible secrets from men - must be the color of ever-consuming secrets, I thought.

"This is it, papa," I had handed him the art board later in the night. He'd scrunched his eyes, evaluating the lobby design. "I'm not sure I get it," he'd said titling his head over one side and moving the board near and far in his line of sight and smiled, "but it sure does look polished."

That was papa through and through; his tastes colored by the ad world he worked for. Everything beyond his understanding was sophisticated or exotic and I didn't argue with him on that front when his ideas worked in the advertising business. He ran Kampilya with an acute business sense to raise profits for his clients, to flatter and blend the lines of truth and lies around the products they sold. Dhri was his creative head pitching fanciful, but money minting campaigns to Kampilya's clients, while Vishwa brought in the hefty accounts with his infamous charm. The riot of a team at Kampilya made all kinds of ads: puritan, political, mud-slinging ones, chic and downright dirty ones too with their share of CLIO equivalent Indian awards. And I was merely content to share their jubilance at such times and stayed out of their ad madness, just as Papa was happy to keep me out of his coterie; with the levels of fierce competition that sometimes choked even him, he had long before decided that it was best I didn't garner any more nefarious attention than I already did outside.

I had my own home and office design consultation firm for a few rarified clients and the inner circles of my uncles, aunts and my parents' friends; a job that came easy to me, though I hadn't professionally trained for it. Luxury and excess wont from a young age, I wasn't hard pressed to earn a living and turned to books whenever I didn't confront my clientele's choice of vanilla bean white over cloud white.

Musing over the little details that made my life both sane and exasperating, I turned into the hallway that would take me to the office kitchenette.

As my hand reached inside to turn on the lights, I pondered if it was rather unusual for the kitchen to wallow in darkness, while the office bustled with activity.

Even as the fluorescent lamps were bleaching the scene with light, I felt the shaft of air, close to me, spark with heat, while a twang resounded in my ears, my body vibrating in tune like that of a plucked string.

And the distinct sound of his sharp exhale matched my own. His brows remained curved with the first focus I had seen there and then his eyes fixed on me like he had found his next target, while I stood mute and observed a hunter's gleam descend over his features.

If this was something akin to a dejavu I'd never felt it before. Though I had never seen the man before me, I sensed a hint of familiarity.

I turned to catch the arrow sticking out of the target board, hung next to the switch and jerked my gaze back to the man at the far end of the kitchen. He'd drawn the blinds closed, I noticed, to bring about an additional gloom and still the arrow hadn't veered off any bit left or right from its mark.

In exception to the few videos Dhri had showed me, I had never laid eyes on a modern day bow before and it was an exceptionally uncommon sight for a man in Kampilya's kitchen to handle a war instrument of the long past; its rivets and metallic adjustments jutting out at all places making it unsightly and presumptuous.

Forcing myself to show that I was far from being shocked or impressed only with his singular feat, I drew on my habitual indifference.

"You should be practiced with the light on," I found myself saying and took a sharp turn to put myself in the right corner.

"The darkness enhances my senses." He was quick to respond, his voice tight and measured, as if he was working on his own compose.

"You could have killed me." I clarified while I cleaned the crusted coffee pot with a hot water rinse.

I heard a thwap, like that of the bow being placed on a table and listened to his hushed footsteps approach me.

"Unlike what you are thinking, it really doesn't hurt." He said and I saw him lean against the countertop and fold his arms, from the corner of my eye.

"What?" My forehead creased with annoyance at his justification and I began to fill coffee from the coffee drum that discharged an unctuous smell of fresh coffee.

"At this distance, another man wielding the bow, with that tiny blunt metal of an arrowhead, it wouldn't have hurt you." He explained and I didn't bother to give him regard.

"But it wasn't another man." I countered.

"Yes, I can't really say the same about me." His voice restrained a laugh. And he doesn't even apologize? I reminded myself.

Though a number of responses edged at my lips, I bit back my sarcasm. "Are you even supposed to be here?" I asked in a mild display of authority, all the while avoiding a glimpse of him and ensuring that the coffee won't spill over.

"I'm here to instruct Dhri," he said only to quickly amend himself, "I mean Dhruv Draupad. If you do happen to see him, would you tell him that he is late for his appointment?"

Dhri! That gave away more than he could say and I was assured, he was one among Dhri's close confidantes; only papa, myself and his best buddies used his nickname.

"Perhaps had you apologized, I would have considered telling Dhri." I said turning to face him, my arms wrapped across my waist, my feet tapping against the floor from a faint anxiety that sprung in me.

"You want me to apologize for having rightly hit the bullseye?" He faked appearing confused.

I shrugged and adjusted the tote on my forearm, my chin tilted upward with a challenge. He was silent for a moment and I let out an involuntary exhale, a far louder one than I liked when I felt his gaze too engaging and direct, slide over my form.

"I see, you are offended," he nodded as though contemplating his choice of words, "I apologize for the insolent arrow that would rather hit the target board than leave a mark on you." And my eyes shot up to his face, a sudden burning under my skin, partly from an ire that wouldn't come to me and the rest owing to the insanity for having liked his rejoinder; his smile laced with mischief.

"If that isn't being brazen..." I said more to myself, and murmured staring at him, "I believe it would do you good to wait here for a while."

The next instant, I turned off the tap, picked up the coffee pot and was out of the kitchen in the same pace of the arrow he'd shot earlier. Shuffled footsteps and I heard him close; he stood poised against the door frame.

"She never did tell him, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud," he began and paused with the same waywardness in his eyes, just as I whipped around before continuing, "feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at that memory. Was not this a beginning indeed?"

Now this was interesting - misquoting Shakespeare from twelfth night and yet, making the words his own. I smiled in approval, unable to hold it in and he knew he had my attention. Of course, Dhri must have told him that I was crazed for Shakespeare, but I couldn't be convinced that anyone wielding a bow would deem it worthy by committing the same to their memory. I had my doubts: this was entirely theatrical, scripted down to every last word, or a charming, but chance encounter - one that was ascertained to take away my sleep for a few days, if not many.

"Kind sir," I addressed him in a tone matching the haughtiness in his response, careful to pick a quote from the same play, "like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught (drink) above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him." He held his smile and I didn't regret calling him a drunken fool for claiming that I would reminisce meeting him.

"Better a witty fool than a foolish wit, madam," he responded in kind. Twelfth night again?

"But we will never know, will we?" I spun around and took a step away from him, suggesting that another such encounter wasn't in our fates, even as I hoped for the opposite.

I realized I didn't know his name and yet a sickening curiosity wouldn't surface, as though his name was a hidden secret in my folded memory; his eyes had instilled an affirmation that we would meet again.

Blue, I whispered and turned around to cast a last glance at him, while he continued to hold that imperious smile of his, before I rounded the corner.

It so happened that I was already taken without my knowing.